1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns accessories for use in apicultures such as various beehive components, artificial cell cups for starting queen cells and the like.
2. The Related Art
Under natural conditions, honey bees build up honeycomb cells for depositing the brood and stores of honey. In apiculture it has become accepted practice to relieve the bees of part of their work in that artificial honeycomb foundations are provided whereby honey production is increased. One type of known honeycomb foundation consists in a thin plate of wax which is mounted on a wooden frame and supported by metal wires stretched across the frame and fused into the plate, and has on both sides preformed hexagonal depressions serving as starting points for the bees to build up the honeycomb cells. In Israel patent specification No. 16787 there is described an artificial honeycomb foundation constituted by a plate which has performed depressions serving as starting points for the formation of honeycomb cells and is made of synthetic plastic material in one piece with a frame of a generally conventional design, equally consisting of synthetic plastic material. Before use these frame-foundation units are spread with a thin layer of wax on both sides in order to induce the bees more rapidly to start building up the cells.
Another kind of artificial honeycomb foundation units is described in Israel patent specification 46512. These foundation units are made of either polyacrylonitrile or polypropylene and are precoated with a thin wax layer. Foundation units according to Israel patent No. 46512 are widely used and are known in the art as Ferman foundations.
The need to coat a beehive component such as an artificial honeycomb foundation unit with wax prior to use has several disadvantages. For one, it adds another operation which has to be performed before the component such as an artificial honeycomb foundation unit can be inserted into a beehive. Furthermore, during handling such as the extraction of honey from the combs by mechanical stripping operations and centrifugation, the wax coating might be damaged and when damaged has to be renewed after honey extraction. Still further, where there occurs a disease in the beehive the various components thereof have to be disinfected, which as a rule is done with boiling disinfectant solutions, whereby their wax coat is melted and removed. Consequently a new wax coating must be applied before the honeycomb foundation unit can be reused. Some beehive components such as a honeycomb foundation unit must be periodically disinfected even where there is no apparent infection, which gives rise to similar problems.
It is accordingly one object of the present invention to provide beehive components that do not have to be wax coated.
It is common practice in apiculture to use artificial cell cups for commercial queen rearing. Various kinds of artificial cell cups are known. One kind comprises cell cups made from beeswax and for support held within wooden cups while another kind is self-supporting and is made from plastic material coated with beeswax. In either case the production of artificial cell cups and their introduction into a colony for queen rearing are tedious operations and it is therefore a further object of the present invention to provide a new type of artificial cell cups.
In the prior art apiculture accessories such as beehive components and cell cups, the metal wires extending across a wooden frame or the plastic material foundation units serve as carriers only, while the substrate with which the bees are in direct contact, is wholly wax. It has in fact been generally believed that this arrangement is a condition sine qua non for attracting the bees to the substrates so as to perform their proper functions such as brood deposition and honey storage in the case of a beehive, and building a queen cell in case of a cell cup. The present invention is based on the surprising observation that equivalent and sometimes even better results can be obtained by using for the manufacture of apiculture accessories a homogeneous moldable mixture comprising a synthetic polymeric or copolymeric material together with an effective amount of a wax.
In the following specifications and claims the terms "polymer" and "polymeric" are meant to denote both homopolymers and copolymers.